Admired as his works are today, at the time many of them seemed hard to understand and hard to accept. His unexpected colours, above all, disturbed (and sometimes shocked) those who had come to know his work during his classical period shortly before the First War; this period is particularly well- represented in our collection. So members of our family were often to be heard saying : "This year he has really gone too far, it is quite impossible to follow him.' But Bonnard was not deflected from his course- -his last works, painted at the age of nearly eighty, include several which still seem puzzling to us today. Tea, painted in 1916, is one of the curious works I spoke of just now : even Bonnard, in the letter quoted below, speaks of a hat in the picture as 'outrageously blue'. The subject and the setting in themselves are a puzzle: when was Bonnard ever in such a palatial house ? It cannot belong to friends; his personal belongings are there, his blue cigarette box and his white vase, and his wife Marthe is pouring the tea. Bonnard always abhorred the 'anecdote'; what he paints is not a 'scene' but has no interest except as a subject for a picture. Here Marthe dominates; she alone is active, she alone is studied, right down to the make-up she used in an attempt to restore her youth. The other women are merely guests on her left, a face that is charming but only hinted at, then a very pretty but lifeless girl. On the extreme right is one of those cut-off profiles of which Bonnard was so fond. Only the woman's back in the foreground, with its strident colours, provides the sharp accent that Bonnard was to put into all his later pictures. Outside the window, the dark mass of the trees

answers her black hair and contrasts with the pale yellow of the branches and the sky. In 1946, four years after this picture had been left to us by my father's brother, we were still arguing about it. So we asked our mother to ask Bonnard how such strange contrasts had come into being; and perhaps we hoped a little that he would alter the picture as he had altered The Sea-Trip in 1925 (p. 105) of his own accord, naturally. Today our question may seem presumptuous : at least it illustrates the perplexity that his constant innovations caused even to his friends. His answer proves that the shock effect was conscious and intentional. Villa du Bosquet, Le Cannet, Alpes-Maritimes (4 January, 1946)

Dear Mme Hahnloser, I am glad to hear you are at Castagnola : a more temperate part of the world, I take it, than Winterthur. At the same time as your letter I received a Swiss Christmas number which showed you surrounded by your pictures and, I was glad to see, quite unchanged. I received a food-parcel from Switzerland a short time ago and am very touched by your concern for us. In the photograph I can see, by your feet, the picture you describe in your letter. I remember the hat, outrageously blue but quite truthful. This reminds me of the Japanese influence of which you speak. In my youth I was excited by the magnificent gaudiness of Japanese crepon-a sort of wove paper, used for popular art. Much later I learned to appreciate the beauty of the great Japanese engravers, who are soberer and reveal less about pure colour combinations. Fénéon called me Bonnard tr?s japonard. Claude Monet is said to have discover- ed Japanese art in a grocer's shop in Holland when his purchase was wrapped in some prints, just as furniture used to be sold in Normandy wrapped in old tapestries.

I hope your stay in Castagnola is a happy one, and remain your devoted friend

P. Bonnard

Inscr. b.r. : Bonnard. Dated on the back :1917

Formerly collection Hahnloser-BZhler, Winterthur